Employee communication is essential to a healthy workplace. But communication can be difficult when employees are working in different offices or even different continents and time zones. Having a great set of employee intranet features helps employees communicate and work together more effectively within a single digital workplace.
But what are the best employee intranet features?
In this blog post, we'll discuss the benefits of creating an employee intranet, as well as the top features and qualities that make a great intranet. We'll also share some tips for choosing the right intranet software for you, and provide some final thoughts on intranet usage in the modern workplace. Read on to learn more!
The Top 7 intranet employee features:
Mobile access to your intranet and all it's capabilities;
Central knowledge base with easy file sharing;
Single sign-on, for one quick login to your intranet and other systems;
Role-based experience customization, giving you full control;
Personalized homepages with relevant content tailored to each employee;
People directory with contact details and individual profiles (with photos!);
Engagement tools & trackers, to get employees actually using your intranet.
Why create an employee intranet?
Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2022 reports that only 21 percent of employees are engaged at work. But did you know that an employee intranet is more than just an engagement platform? It's an excellent tool for supporting employees in their roles and connecting them to the right people and technology to make their work lives better. With the right features and content, you can use an intranet to help your people feel connected, well-resourced, and valued. A modern intranet can also make internal communication between employees more effortless and efficient. This can be a crucial tool in ensuring team cohesion and productivity. By establishing an employee intranet, your business will become more efficient, organized and profitable.
Make your intranet so good it becomes your employees favourite way to communicate
Employee communication is essential to an organization's success. An intranet that is easy to navigate, and packed with features that are useful and helpful, is a surefire way to create a great employee experience. Keep in mind that intranets don't have to be complex or overwhelming - in fact, many employers prefer them to be the opposite. Make use of tools like blogs, chat rooms, and message boards to allow employees to share their thoughts and ideas. Make sure the layout is simple and easy to understand and ensure that all content is easily accessible.
Additionally, invest in employee surveys and polls to get their feedback and suggestions on their working environment, and how the intranet is impacting employee productivity and satisfaction. This will help you make necessary changes and enhancements. In the end, having an intranet that is employee-friendly will go a long way in helping your organization thrive.
To have the best employee intranet, you need these things...
74% of CFOs plan to transition employees from on-premise to remote work permanently (Happeo). Since remote work is on the rise (63% of employees work remotely at least part-time, according to a recent study by workplace software company Zenefits), it’s important for your employee intranet to support this trend.
To create a great employee experience, launch an intranet that is easy to use and navigate. Make sure it allows employees to directly engage with your content by offering features such as Likes and Comments on news articles, peer recognition and 'shout-out' leaderboards, staff surveys and quizzes, etc – anything that makes them feel more engaged will reap benefits!
An intranet is an excellent tool for keeping your employees informed about company happenings and communicating important information. So embrace the two-way comms revolution, and take pride in promoting your internal comms and employee success stories.
Employee empowerment
Employee empowerment is a goal of many intranets, because it allows employees to take control of their work and career development. Intranets that provide employee resources like job postings, chat rooms, social networking groups, allow them to collaborate with other team members more effectively—and get advice from experts within your organization.
Intranets also provide in-house training that allows employees to stay up-to-date and learn new skills faster than they would by attending classes.
However, designing an intranet that actually delivers on employee empowerment isn't easy – it takes time and effort, but studies have shown that happy employees are more productive and satisfied with their jobs overall. So, if you want to create an intranet that is truly outstanding, start by embracing employee empowerment features that will help workers take control of their lives and careers.
How does your digital workplace compare?
Ensuring that employees have easy access to company information and resources is one way to create a positive work environment. This is where intranet features come in handy. They can help workers stay organized and connected, reduce stress levels, and contribute to a positive employee experience. Intranet systems can also help gather employee feedback and monitor performance. By designating an Intranet as the official communication platform for your team, you're building a strong foundation for future success and a central one-stop-shop resource your employees use and trust.
Intranets can be customized to create a unique user experience, so be sure to take advantage of all its features!
The 15 Employee Intranet Features for a Great Employee Experience:
1. Create a centrally accessible knowledge base.
An intranet experience that's truly outstanding starts with an intranet that's easy to navigate. Having information stored in lots of different places, or in badly organised folders on the company server, makes life difficult for employees. Solutions like Hub, allow you to create an online knowledge management solution with fully customizable navigation, so that you can make it easy for employees to find the information they need in under 3 clicks. From building department pages and sharing documents, to connecting your Sharepoint or cloud drives, your intranet's knowledge base needs to be the place that employees can go and know that they will find what they need, and be able to access that information from anywhere - not just the office. This is great for work-from-home arrangements, as well as when employees are on the go.
Having all your company files stored online and accessible from anywhere, might sound like a security nightmare, but far from it. Employee intranets have very robust and secure security systems, with strict password-protected access and even two-factor authentication for IT's peace of mind. At the end of the day, creating a central knowledge based is the foundation of a well-designed intranet, that can make a big difference in employee engagement and work satisfaction.
2. Ensure all your content is tagged for a better experience.
Creating an employee intranet is an important task that can help foster a great work-life balance. By using smart intranet features like Tags, you can associate and categorise your content with relevant keywords, to ensure that all your intranet content and news are easily searchable and managed. This will make it easier for employees to find the information they need, and help them stay organized and focused on their work.
Tagging is works on employees and enables you to deliver a better content experience, which is key for any intranet. By harnessing the power of tags, your intranet can match Employee Profile Tags with news and content tagged with the same keywords, meaning your intranet will automatically serve the right content to the right people. Employees are more likely to engage with your content if it's relevant to them. Tags give you the power to deliver a smarter employee experience that's tailored to each user, serving relevant content that resonates with them
3. Custom branding your intranet - and giving it a name.
Intranet design can play a big role in creating a positive employee experience. If your intranet looks great, it's more likely to get used by your employees. By implementing the right design features, you can create an intranet that is user-friendly, informative, and visually appealing. First and foremost, give your intranet a name that accurately reflects the content and your company culture. At Hub, we make intranet branding fully customisable, so make the colour palette, fonts, background imagery and logo your own. Plus, we have numerous features that allow you to showcase strong graphics and imagery to create an engaging user experience, with things like call-to-action buttons and carousel announcements. By taking the time to create a visual identity for your intranet, employees appreciate the care and attention that's been given to deliver them a great experience.
4. Harness social features for an engagement-boost.
Some management might recoil with the fear that 'social features' mean employees will waste all day chatting with each other online, but a social intranet is more than just 'chatting'. Social intranet features are key to any modern digital workplace, and provide you fantastic tools to deliver better employee experiences. Just a simply thing like adding Likes and Commenting features to your company news, can make a huge difference in employee engagement levels, and help you better understand how your content is being received by employees.
Other social intranet features like Hub's Group Forums, create collaborative spaces for employees to communicate together and share information more effectively. Task Management features make it easier for employees to communicate and organise work more efficiently. There's of course polls, surveys and whole host of other social engagement features available, all of which will give your intranet a positive engagement-boost.
5. Use plenty of images and graphics to support your text.
If you want your employees to have a great experience on your intranet, you need to use ample images and graphics to support your text. Using images and graphics to supoprt your content, instead of just text, is a great way to ensure your intranet is user-friendly and easy to navigate. Not only do they make the text more readable, but they can also highlight key points, show off important content more effectively, and drive engagement with more visible calls-to-action.
Good design principles will help to increase employee engagement and create greater user satisfaction with their experience on your intranet. So, go ahead and give your intranet more images for the employee experience it deserves!
6. Keep a clean and simple look and feel to your intranet.
Your intranet is a reflection of your company culture and values. Keeping a clean and simple look and feel to your intranet is essential. It's not just about aesthetics—it's about usability, too.
A clean-looking employee intranet will promote a positive image of your company. That means no flashy animations, no pop-up ads, no unnecessary bells or whistles that distract from the content you are trying to present. Instead, focus on making sure every page on your intranet has a consistent layout, with clear navigation and links that are easy for users to find.
Ensure all content is searchable and filterable, and use colors that are easy on the eye to create an intranet that's easy to use.
7. Get personal with Profiles, and get everyone to fill them.
A great employee intranet feature is User Profiles. You can't get to know your employees if you don't know who they are, and profiles allow you to put faces to names within your organization. A good employee intranet makes it easy for each worker to update their own profile, with information about their role, their team responsibilities, hobbies and expertise, their employee tags and more. Ensuring everyone fills out their profiles as part of their onboarding process, creates an accurate employee directory from the off.
In addition, personal profiles makes it easy for you to find and connect with your employees online, with direct private messaging and bulk emailing features. Plus a searchable employee directory means you can easily find the right person quickly.
Not only is your employee directory a useful tool in itself, but the information within the personal profiles help to power a wide range of other automated features, including Birthday, Work Anniversary and New Starter Announcements to celebrate employees.
But one of the most important uses of employee profiles is to maintain an accurate, up to date list of everyone that works at your company. This means whenever someone leaves or joins your company, they are automatically added or removed from your intranet directory, making it easier for other users to know who's working where.
8. Use dedicated Group Forums & spaces for discussion.
Employees need to feel connected to really be engaged and productive. One way to achieve this is by creating dedicated spaces for employees to collaborate, work and discuss. Intranet features like Group Forums are a great place for employees to work together on particular projects, share ideas and information, and ultimately be more productive in their roles as they connect to the people and resources they need.
Hub's Group Forums provide private or open spaces where group members can create an unlimited hierarchy of pages to store information specifically relevant to their needs. Group Chat Threads empower collaboration, and allow employees to post and reply to conversations in real time, plus chat notifications drive employees back into the conversation for greater engagement and sense of connectivity whenever a new chat is added. The more you encourage your employees to communicate with each other, the more engaged they will feel, and having dedicated spaces for discussion delivers a better employee experience.
9. Customised department pages make your intranet easier to use and navigate.
One of the best ways to improve your intranet is to divide it into dedicated spaces, departments, and project areas. By creating an organised hierarchy of pages and resources, it makes it easier for employees to find the information they need, because it gives them a way logical way to navigate through the site and its content more quickly.
By utilising smart intranet page features like Page Folder Icons, Quick Links, and 'My Favourite' options, employees will be able to go directly to a page that has the relevant information they want, without having to search through a cluttered homepage or click through multiple pages to get what they're going. It also makes sure each section of your intranet is focused on one topic (like HR), so employees know where they can find information specific to their department or role within the company.
In the end, creating a modern intranet that is user-friendly, effective and customized to your business is the key to creating a great worker experience.
10. Use Surveys and Polls to monitor employee wellbeing.
For your employees to be productive in their workplace, they not only need the right tools to do their jobs, but they also need to be happy. Great employee intranet features like staff surveys and polls, allow you to gauge the mood of your people, and allow you to take effective action to make changes for the better.
Surveys and Polls can be done anonymously, which empowers employees to be open and honest in their responses. Submission dashboards enable HR Managers and survey admins to view and manage survey responses, or assign them to line managers to take action and provide support to employees struggling.
By creating an open environment, with the tools for employees can provide feedback, you can use your intranet to create a better employee experience both on and offline.
11. Harness News features to communicate better.
Employees today demand more than just a good work-life balance. They want to feel like they're part of a team and can engage in the company's mission and vision. A great way to do this is by keeping them informed about the goings on within your business.
That's where intranet news features come in. Employee intranets like Hub, enable you to easily showcase what's going on in your company, and shout about employee success stories. Intranet news features allow you to create unlimited news articles, each categorised into different topics, so employees can easily find related articles. Dedicated News Containers can be embedded on your intranet homepage, which automatically update with the latest news without you lifting a finger. Create different containers for different news categories, so you can better showcase company news, team updates, or any combination of news you want. All this ensures you communicate more effectively with your employees, and make it easier for them to find out whats happening at work.
Plus Hub's Tag features power news alerts, automatically notifying employees about new content that's relevant to them. By providing an effective internal communication platform, you'll create a positive employee experience and drive engagement.
12. Embrace E-Learning features and use your intranet for employee onboarding and training.
Employee training is essential for creating an outstanding employee experience and promoting employee development. Putting tutorials and training resources on your intranet makes it easier for employees to improve their knowledge, and also lets them know you care about their personal development within your organisation.
Create a dedicated area within your intranet for e-learning, making a one-stop-shop of training resources, including videos, manuals and assessments. Many intranets have Assessment features, which allow you to build quizzes and tests that are scorable, and can provide feedback if the employee answers incorrectly. All of this promotes better employee development, and leadership scoreboards channel competitiveness to drive employees to learn and engage with your assessments.
Making your intranet the place for onboarding new employees, means you can create a completely dedicated space for their initial training, as well as providing them with easy access to their employee handbook, company policies and other resources they'll need as a new employee at your organisation.
13. Use Single Sign-On to make it easy employees to login.
The success of your intranet is closely tied to the number of employees who actually login and use it. If you have a large company and only a small percentage of employees are logging in, your intranet is not being used as effectively as it could be.
One way you can increase the amount of users on your intranet, is by making sure that you utilise single sign-on (SSO) features to make it quick and easy for employees to login. SSO uses your employee's existing login information on your other systems, to automatically log them in. Whether you use Active Directory, Office 365, Google, OKTA or OneLoging, your employees can just simply click a button and they'll be automatically logged into your intranet - hassle free!
Another way to encourage logging in, is making sure all new employees are automatically directed to it when they start working at the company. This will ensure that everyone has an opportunity to explore its features and use them on their own time, while they are still getting acclimated with the rest of their new job.
14. Use Forms for Q&As and Suggestion Boxes, to make employee communication easier.
Q&A forums and suggestion boxes are great for facilitating feedback, boosting employee collaboration, and two-way communication between employees and management. By utilising intranet forms, you can create a great place for employees to ask questions and share feedback about your company and their working environment. If you like their suggestions, you can share them with the rest of your company by hosting their responses in a dedicated homepage container, so colleagues can read the great ideas and questions their teammates submitted.
Setting up an intranet Q&A forum is not only beneficial for communication but can also be used for training purposes. As a result, your team members will be able to understand company policies and procedures quickly and easily!
17. Humour is good. Be human. Communicate humanly.
A feature-rich intranet is wonderful, but tech alone won't keep employees happy. A good intranet should include features that make employees feel like humans, whether it's a blog where employees can post their thoughts, or a social networking platform for team collaboration. Humour is also a powerful tool for communication, and it can help employees feel more accepted and connected.
By incorporating a touch of humour into your intranet culture, you can break the ice and connect with employees on a personal level. This can help to foster a positive work environment and encourage creativity and innovation.
Additionally, by being human, you're setting a great example for your employees. They'll know you care about them, and that makes them more likely to work hard. It's important that your intranet features are fun and playful – this will encourage creativity and engagement in the workplace. So, don't be afraid to inject a little humour into your intranet experience!
How To Pick the Right Intranet Software
The intranet software you choose should be able to support the needs of your organization, and it should be easy to use. When you're looking at intranet software options, you'll want to focus on a few key features.
Look for strong security. You'll want to know that your intranet is protected by strong firewalls and other security measures.
Look for an easy-to-use interface that can be customized to suit your needs as an organization.
Make sure the platform is compatible with the tools your organization uses—if you're going to have employees accessing it from their phones or tablets, make sure it's compatible with those devices.
Final thoughts: What you need to know about choosing the right intranet software
When it comes to employee intranet software, there are a variety of features that can improve the frontline workers experience. Some common features include authentication and permissions, communication tools, file sharing, and team collaboration. Not only will your intranet software improve employee productivity, but it will help you make better decisions about employee management. Happy intranet-ing!
Employee intranet features can make a big difference in the employee experience. By providing employees with the tools they need to be productive and connected, intranet features can help create an environment that is positive and supportive. Social media integration, group messaging, and file sharing are just a few of the social features of a modern social intranet that can help connect employees from all departments together.
By creating a centralized location for employees to access, managers can keep track of employee productivity and morale.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an employee intranet?
An employee intranet is a dedicated site or application that employees use to access company information, such as email and files. It can also include features like online tasks, HR management tools, and more. By creating an effective employee intranet, companies can help their employees feel connected to the company and improve productivity.
What employee intranet features should we include?
The best intranet software should include features like company news, HR policies and procedures, employment applications, team calendars, and more. Additionally, it should have a search engine that is easy to use and navigate.
I am an HR Manager. I'm being asked to own/lead an intranet platform, but where should I start?
Whether you're an HR Manager or a C-level executive tasked with managing a new intranet platform, intranet ownership is a big deal. After all, your intranet can help employees stay up-to-date with company news, policies, procedures, etc.
If you've been asked to lead an intranet platform for your company you're probably not sure where to start. Here are some things to think about:
How do employees communicate with each other? Is it mostly through email or chat platforms like Slack or MS Teams?
What kind of content do you want to include on the intranet platform? What kind of information will help employees feel connected and productive at work?
How do you choose a good software platform with the best employee intranet features?
Choosing the right employee intranet software is a big deal. It's the tool you'll use to keep your employees informed, engaged, and excited about their jobs.
It's also a big investment. You want to make sure you're getting the most bang for your buck by finding a platform that really delivers on all of its promises.
So how do you go about choosing great software? There are a few things to keep in mind:
Does it have a good track record?
Is it easy to use and customize?
Does it meet the needs of my company?
Has it got good customer reviews?
Should my intranet include a mobile app?
That depends on your organization and business needs. Many employers include mobile apps for employee use, but others do not because of the time and resources required to develop them. In many cases, the functionality of an internet or cloud-based intranet may be perfectly sufficient for routine task management. The most important thing is that employees can use their mobile devices to access your intranet's social network, instant messaging, video conferencing, and general workspace features.
Conclusion
With this blog, you know exactly which features you should include in your employee intranet solution that will be loved and appreciated. By implementing the features listed above, you will be able to empower your employees and create a work environment that is conducive to communication. As always, if you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to leave them below. We would love to hear from you!
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